Repairing a Probationary Officer's Shoplifting Report
You are the patrol supervisor reviewing a probationary auxiliary officer's draft report before it goes to records. The draft reads, in order:
- "At approximately 1400 hours, the store was entered by a subject who was observed by the clerk taking merchandise."
- "The subject was a suspicious-looking male in a dark jacket."
- "I then arrived and spoke with the clerk, Mr. Alvarez."
- "Loss prevention detained the subject at 1405 hours, five minutes before Mr. Alvarez called 911 at 1410."
- "Mr. Alvarez stated the subject put two boxes of cold medicine and one can of energy drink into a backpack and walked past the register without paying."
- "A total of $86.40 in merchandise was recovered."
- "The subject was uncooperative and obviously high on something."
The store's price sheet lists cold medicine at $24.99 per box and the energy drink at $3.49. Department policy requires reports to use active voice, to separate observed facts from conclusions, and to present events in chronological order.
1. Which numbered sentences violate the "facts, not conclusions" standard, and why? Rewrite one of them as observable behavior.
Read the worked answer
Both sentence 2 and sentence 7 fail the standard, for different reasons.
Sentence 2 - "suspicious-looking" is the officer's characterization, not an observation. It tells the reader nothing a camera could confirm and invites a defense challenge that the officer prejudged the subject.
Sentence 7 - "obviously high on something" is a medical conclusion the officer is not qualified to draw. It also merges two separate ideas: the subject's behavior (which is reportable) and a diagnosis (which is not).
Rewrites:
- "The male wore a dark jacket, kept his hands in his pockets, and looked toward the door repeatedly while the clerk spoke to him."
- "When I asked for his name, the male looked at the floor and did not answer. I smelled a strong odor of alcohol when he spoke."
The rule of thumb: describe what a camera and a nose would record. If the sentence contains an adjective about character or a diagnosis, replace it with the conduct or the sensory observation that produced it, and let the reader draw the inference.
2. Check the chronology and the arithmetic. Identify every inconsistency and state the corrected order of events.
Read the worked answer
Chronology. Sentence 3 places the officer's arrival before the detention in sentence 4, but the detention at 1405 preceded the 911 call at 1410, and the officer responded to that call. As written, the officer appears to have arrived before being dispatched. The events themselves are internally consistent - 1405 is indeed five minutes before 1410 - but their presentation is out of order.
Corrected sequence: 1400 observation by the clerk → 1405 detention by loss prevention → 1410 911 call → officer arrival → interview of Mr. Alvarez → recovery of merchandise.
Arithmetic. Two boxes at $24.99 is $49.98; plus $3.49 is $53.47, not $86.40. The gap is $32.93. Either the itemized list is incomplete, a price is wrong, or the total is a typo - possibly a transposition. None of these can be resolved by the reviewer; the officer must reconcile the figure with the price sheet or the receipt before submission.
Both errors are the kind that surface at trial: one lets a defense attorney argue the officer was never at the scene when claimed, the other suggests the recovery figure was invented.
3. Rewrite the first paragraph of the report - three sentences maximum - in active voice with a defensible chronology.
Read the worked answer
"At 1400 hours on 12 March, I responded to a shoplifting call at Corbin Market, 218 Alder Street. Loss prevention staff told me they detained a male at 1405 hours and that Mr. Alvarez called 911 at 1410. Mr. Alvarez stated the male placed two boxes of cold medicine and one can of energy drink in a backpack and walked past the register without paying."
Why this works:
- Subject first. "I responded," "Loss prevention staff told me," "Mr. Alvarez stated." Every action has a named actor; the passive "the store was entered by a subject" is gone.
- Chronology is linear. 1400 → 1405 → 1410 → interview. A reader never has to reorder the paragraph.
- Attribution is explicit. The merchandise description is labeled as Mr. Alvarez's statement, not the officer's observation, which is accurate and protects the report if the clerk's account shifts.
- The recovery total is deliberately omitted until the $32.93 discrepancy between the price sheet and the itemized goods is resolved.
A report opening should answer who, what, when, and where in the first two sentences, so a reader who stops there still has the essential facts.